11 March 2011

Ha! If you are reading this post a few months from its publication, chances are that we just met and you thought a) Austria was Australia b) Austria is part of the former USSR c) Austria only brings out sex offenders or xenophobic politicians d) Austria must be part of Germany because we speak German (I'd refer to the German state of Bavaria, though Germans north or the Black Forest might disagree...) e) The Sound of Music! or f) Austria, wait, that's a country?

... and in order to give the poor little landlocked country I grew up in some exposure while having a perfect excuse to promote my blog, I sent you this link. Not to humiliate you but to give you an opportunity to learn from me about another country, just like I hope you give me the chance to learn about yours.

Although we rarely admit it, a lot of us will have (hopefully only) a few black spots on the world map. Usually, it is due to the fact that whichever country we grew up in, our continent most likely dominated our history and geography lessons. Still, in the spirit of world exploration and especially in times of ever-increasing globalisation, I think that one should attempt to overcome any education gaps.

A lot of Europeans would scoff if confronted on holiday with the fact that the locals do not recognise where they were from, and would react with, "I'm from Europe, you should at least know the countries of Europe, navel of modern world history!" (ignorant of the fact that history too, is selective, subjective and political). Yet how many Europeans would be able to point out the exact location of Malawi, the Niger (no, not Nigeria), Laos or Uzbekistan on a map? Or, even the location of Ohio, Illinois, Washington (no, not DC!) or Maine? Whether a complete knowledge of all countries of the world is useful to the everyday lives of people, particularly the socially disadvantaged, is another matter: Although I naturally believe that one should always thrive to learn new things whether useful or not, I also believe in prioritising needs.

I have always been a Geography geek. I guess it has something to do with travelling and hiking loads as a child, holding lots of maps and playing "What is the capital of...?". I also had a globe in my room - the kind that shows you the sun's path across the Earth depending on the time of year - and our house is full with souvenirs from around the world. Foreign countries have fascinated me for as long as I can remember, not least due to my dual heritage. I am sure it is the reason why I studied social anthropology and embarked on a career in international development. So much for my own curiosity for places far away.

In Southeast Asia, I came across many people who had never heard of the country I come from, or they have but don't associate it with much. While it does not offend me (for many reasons), it is very frustrating to have to say, "It is very similar to Germany" if I want to help people place me. Austria and Germany, while on friendly terms, are competing neighbours with similar but different cultures, kind of like Malaysia vs. Singapore or China vs. Taiwan.

Instead of giving an abbreviated history of Austria (available on Wikipedia anyway), I decided to pick 15 brands/names/things that you probably have heard of but might not associated with Austria. I tried to make the facts interesting for Austrian readers as well!

#1 Movies that featured Austrian film locations:

Look familiar?

Click on the image to see the complete picture.

You saw it at the beginning of James Bond's Quantum of Solace (partially shot in Bregenz & Feldkirch). Austria has a lot of lakes and hosts quite a few festivals on floating stages.Bridget Jones flew down the slopes in Lech am Arlberg in the Edge of Reason and Brad Pitt hiked somewhere around Lienz in Seven Years in Tibet, playing Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer.

#2 Swarovski crystals:Founded in 1895 by Daniel Swarovski who set up the factory in the Tyrol (to use local hydroelectric power for the energy-intensive grinding process). The museum is a popular tourist attraction. Look for yourself on its official website!

#3 Famous Queens:Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France, was Austrian. Her mother, based in Vienna, was Empress of the Holy Roman Empire, Maria Theresia [please DO NOT confuse with Mother Theresa...] who had 16 kids (of which 3 did not survive infancy, 3 more died as teenagers) AND was a leader of the Habsburg empire that at some point in time included pretty much half of Europe (conquered by marriage). A great reformer, she abolished torture and for the first time, capital punishment (which was later reintroduced by her successors; the last person was executed in 1950 and the capital punishment was finally banned in 1968), introduced compulsory school attendance, taxed the nobility (to great benefit of the Austrian economy), introduced small pox vaccinations for children (setting a good example with her own) and reduced the influence of the Church, among other accomplishments.

#4 Mozart... was probably Austria's most famous wunderkind. Since we just had International Women's Day, let's mention for once that his sister, Maria Anna (nicknamed "Nannerl") was also a gifted composer and could have been very successful if she had lived in another era:

"When she was seven years old, her father [Leopold] started teaching her to play the harpsichord. Leopold took her and Wolfgang on tours of many cities, such as Vienna and Paris, to showcase their talents. In the early days she sometimes received top billing and she was noted as an excellent harpsichord player and fortepianist.

However, given the views of her parents, prevalent in her society at the time, it became impossible as she grew older for Marianne to continue her career any further. According to New Grove, 'from 1769 onwards she was no longer permitted to show her artistic talent on travels with her brother, as she had reached a marriageable age.'

Wolfgang went on during the 1770s to many artistic triumphs while traveling in Italy with Leopold, but Marianne had to stay home in Salzburg with her mother. She likewise stayed home with Leopold when Wolfgang visited Paris and other cities (1777-1779) accompanied by his mother. There is evidence that Marianne wrote musical compositions, as there are letters from Wolfgang praising her work, but the voluminous correspondence of father Leopold never mentions any of her compositions, and none have survived." - From Wikipedia.

Beethoven (German) spent the majority and rest of his life in Austria as did many other musicians because Vienna used to be the music capital of Europe (think of it as the Hollywood of classical music). Nowadays, young people from around the world (a lot from East Asia) come to Vienna to study music (much like art students who go to Paris). Last year, I attended a Christmas concert by the Taiwanese embassy featuring some 40 really gifted Taiwanese students performing European classical music and Taiwanese compositions. I think I finally had an idea of the amazement of Malays and Indonesians when meeting foreigners who learn their history and/or language!

#5 Arnold Schwarzenegger, the "Governator"... is Austrian.

#6 Movies made BY Austrians:Stefan Ruzowitzky - The Counterfeiters

"The Counterfeiters (German: Die Fälscher) is a film written and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky. It fictionalizes Operation Bernhard, a secret plan by the Nazis during the Second World War to destabilize Great Britain by flooding its economy with forged Bank of England bank notes. The film centres on a Jewish counterfeiter, Salomon 'Sally' Sorowitsch, who is coerced into assisting the Nazi operation at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp." - quoted from IMDB. It won the 2007 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

Erwin Wagenhofer - We feed the World

"Every day in Vienna the amount of unsold bread sent back to be disposed of is enough to supply Austria's second-largest city, Graz. Around 350,000 hectares of agricultural land, above all in Latin America, are dedicated to the cultivation of soybeans to feed Austria's livestock while one quarter of the local population starves. Every European eats ten kilograms a year of artificially irrigated greenhouse vegetables from southern Spain, with water shortages the result.

In WE FEED THE WORLD, Austrian filmmaker Erwin Wagenhofer traces the origins of the food we eat. His journey takes him to France, Spain, Romania, Switzerland, Brazil and back to Austria.

Leading us through the film is an interview with Jean Ziegler, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food." - quoted from the official website. If you like Food, Inc., you'll like this movie.

Michael Haneke - The Piano Teacher (French: La Pianiste)

A 2001 film directed by Michael Haneke, starring Isabelle Huppert and Benoît Magimel. The film is based on a novel by Elfriede Jelinek. She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004.

"Erika Kohut, in her late thirties, and a piano teacher at the Vienna Conservatory, lives with her tyrannical elderly mother in a hermetically sealed world of love-hate and dependency in which there is no room for men. Her sex life consists of voyeurism and masochistic self-injury. Then one of Erika's pupils decides to seduce his teacher." - quoted from the film's profile by the Cannes Film Festival. Yes, the content is provocative for Austrian standards too.

#7 Automobile EngineersPorsche:Before its founder Mr. Ferdinand Porsche established himself with racing car motors, he created the VW Beetle, the first gasoline-electric hybrid car. Quite an improvement, that some visualised creatively as shown below:

Siegfried Marcus:Forgotten by the world, credited as the person who got the first gas-powered car running (late 19th century)!

#8 Gustav Klimt...painted The Kiss:

#9 DiplomatsKurt Waldheim, controversial 4th UN Secretary-General (late in his career, it was revealed that he used to be a Nazi intelligence officer and he was subsequently banned from entering the US)

#10 Ignaz Semmelweis, M. D.Discovered in the 1840s that childbed fever could be drastically reduced if doctors washed their hands between autopsies and gynaecological examinations (yay!). It was only in the 1860s however, when Louis Pasteur proved the germ theory of diseases that Semmelweis findings were confirmed and broadly accepted.

#11 PhysicistsAustria has quite a lot of renown physicists. These three are the ones you have most likely heard of:

Ernst Mach:Physicist and philosopher who studied shock waves. The Mach number, the unit of the speed of sound, is named after him.

Christian Doppler:Physicist and mathematician the Doppler Effect is named after.

#12 Made in Austria:Red Bull:Have you ever seen the following drink in Thailand and wondered if it was a Red Bull knock-off?

Actually, it is the other way around: In the 1980s, Austrian entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz was on a trip to Thailand as international marketing director of a toothpaste brand and discovered that the local drink called Krating Daeng (in turn, based on Japanese drink Lipovitan/Livita) relieved his jet lag. Global headquarters are in Fuschl am See.

Glock guns:Most widely distributed gun among police forces world-wide (including Royal Malaysian Police & Armed Forces, Philippine security forces, the Thai National Police, the Geneva Police, the London Metropolitan Police Firearms Unit and pretty much every law enforcement agency in the USA). At home in Deutsch-Wagram.

Fischer & Atomic Skis:Some of the largest manufacturers of equipment for competitive winter sport athletes (just watch a world cup or the winter olympics!).

#13 Sigmund Freud:Founder of psychoanalysis.

#14 Bertha von Suttner:Radical pacifist. First female winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (1905). Believed to have been influential in Nobel's decision to include a peace prize category. Can be found on the 2€ coin.

Interestingly, most people, including myself until now, falsely believe it is her contemporary Empress Elisabeth (Sisi), notable for her feminist spirit, and more famous in contemporary popular culture (a successful musical production about her life that was sold to as far as Japan; a movie trilogy starring Romy Schneider that is shown each year over the Christmas holidays on national TV and probably has been ever since it was released in 1955) on the 2€ coin.

#15 United NationsAustria's capital Vienna was the third of the United Nation HQs, after New York and Geneva and before Nairobi. It also hosts the global headquarters of the IAEA (yes, Mr. Mohamad ElBaradei!), UNIDO and UNODC (UN Office on Drugs and Crime). The last UN Special Rapporteur for Torture, Manfred Nowak, was from Austria.

I hope you enjoyed this post and learned a few new things, I certainly did while researching some facts!

2
courageous comments!:

Anonymous
said...

Liebe Heidi, that´s a very interesting post!!especially for Austrians. Finally I will watch the films I have already heard of a lot (the pianist and We feed the World). So interesting about Marianne Mozart!!! There are much more female artists than we know... See you soon at Tichy - which is Austrian too ;)kiss martina